Six Christmases away from Quarropas and I’ve just learned what had been the area’s “local radio station” has now become an on-dial sports talk destination. As if WFAN and the New York Metropolitan ESPN radio conduit insufficiently failed capturing bar stool jocks. Continue reading Cozy and Comfy→

Once again, that most American of holidays is upon us. Thanksgiving. That day may be our finest national holidays because it commemorates nothing. Nor does it beg solemnity for anything.

Doesn’t Thanksgiving typify us? The fourth Thursday in November just insists we wallow in mindless gluttony while passionately pursuing socio-political points as we solidify family grudges. Continue reading Shallow Thanks→

Middle of November 2019, the Las Vegas city council approved ordinances to corral the homeless. The legislation will ultimately frustrate all involved and prove meaningless. The only good which may come from them is a somewhat honest public debate regarding transient control and the funds taxpayers will wish to dedicate to such.

There should be no doubt that a good portion of residents will suggest loading vagrants onto Union Pacific freight cars then shipping and leaving them in the Mojave. Here in libertarian Nevada, the idea of an individual making him- or herself incapable of carrying his or her own water, of being an intentional public burden, will rankle. Continue reading Sidewalks Are Not for Sleeping→

Shouldn’t Las Vegas be the one place in America free of evangelicals? After all, people visit the Big Mayberry to escape the godscreamers’ “old time religion,” their moral superiority, and as well as their judgmental natures.

But even here there is no respite from the moralizers and holier-than-thou intending to make another’s life as hellish, narrow and proscribed as theirs. Continue reading Imaginary Grace→

A Quarropas episode has been transferred to movie screens. This docudrama is making its way along the film festival circuit. Hopefully a distributor will acquire the movie and give it general release. Though factually based, and likely with poetic license taken, the effort will not portray my former hometown kindly.

At what point beyond the Northeast Region do Americans start ceding our postures? Not physical postures, but those defining who we claim being and how our projections are received. Continue reading Land of the Least Free→